Man, it's been a long time since I've actually sat down and played one of these 8-bit JRPGs. They aren't very thrilling or satisfying to play in the slightest. They don't require any real strategy or thinking at all. But I dunno still there's something really meditative/relaxing about grinding through them... I guess things like walkthroughs and emulation speed up tools go a long way towards making these games more playable. Like, without a turbo button I don't think I'd have been able to sit through this shit.
Unfortunately, my hunt for a translation patch for this game came up short. I guess I'll just rely on a walkthrough to figure out what little bits and pieces of the story I can. I also have to play the game with a notepad open containing all of the menu translations so that I can at least figure out the attacks and the shop items/equipment and all that. it kind of adds a huge layer of difficulty onto this, but whatever, I need to beat this to satisfy my ocd.
From what I can tell, Goemon has lost his favorite pipe, and Ebisumaru helps him go to look for it. Then you start journeying to other towns and get caught up in other unrelated stuff. At one point early on, they get a lockpicking wire which lets them get through locked doors.. They come to a town full of cats, and a cat throws them in jail, and while escaping, they join up with a fugitive cat who was also in jail.
There's a part where you go through a dungeon to get a large diamond as a reward, but the only use for it is to give it to a random NPC, who gives you a fish in exchange for it. That fish is a key item needed to get up a waterfall to get to this one town. Just as they're approaching that town, a giant female robot walks by...
yep, that happened. I realized this is the first appearance of a giant robot in the series, before Impact was even a thing.
This game also introduces Yae for the first time. Except here she has black hair instead of green, and she thinks Goemon is an enemy when she first meets him.
She battles Goemon's group and wins, and throws them in jail. It turns out, there's a fake Goemon imposter running around, and after you defeat him, Yae joins your party.
Then, almost immediately after Yae joins, you have to temporarily replace her with this other girl, Lynn, and go through a dungeon with her to get some medicine to save her sick friend. It's kind of weird that you have this party member for just one dungeon and have to level her up to fight a boss, and then you never see her again...
After you do this, Lynn stays behind and Yae rejoins your group... Lynn gives you a key item that lets you pass hrough an underground tunnel to an airport, which takes you to this exotic island, where the chief wants you to retrieve a sacred banana from a volcano...
After you give the chief the banana, he gives you the "Woman's Face" in exchange.. this is used to disguise your party as female so you can get passed some ninja guards in the basement of a teahouse, and there you finally get an item that lets you get through the entrance to a castle.. There you fight a robot controlled by some old man.. the old man then turns into a dog.
Then you leave the castle and the giant robot woman appears again... it seems that this giant robot is connected to the main enemy in this game.
The robot opens up a path in the mountains leading to the snowy area. A turtle comes and helps you get across the water.. in this place, these 2 guys come and carry Goemon's party members away (the same enemy from the normal games who takes you back to the start if he touches you). So you're stuck playing as Goemon solo for a while. This part is actually kind of hard if you didn't get all the best armor for Goemon.
Goemon finds a flying castle, then gets a beanstalk seed from somebody and uses it to get up to the castle to where the rest of his team is locked up.
After you rescue them, then they go off to another island to find the key item needed for the last part of the game... but on the boat ride back from that island, the giant robot woman shows up again and destroys their boat. The turtle from before comes and rescues Goemon's group, but before taking them to shore he takes them to this strange island full of humanoid sea creatures.
Wow, I didn't know Umihara Kawase took inspiration from Mystical Ninja... anyway, the only point of this town seems to be to get Goemon's 2nd strongest weapon from an NPC.. After that, they go to Edo Castle. The boss you fight at the end of here is... surprise! The giant robot woman.
After that, the person controlling her gets away on a blimp, and you have to use the flute you got from a UFO in an earlier dungeon to catch a ride on the UFO to help you chase after it.
They go into this final underwater dungeon, and fight a bunch of giant robots and aliens. Then they go back to the first town, and the real final boss shows up in Goemon's house, and beating him starts the ending sequence.
I'm sure I'd have loved the hell out of this game if it were translated. At least I got to experience the visual aspects.
I really liked the enemy designs, they're definitely something you'd expect to see in a Mystical Ninja game...
This game also continues the trend of having pointless extra scenes hidden away in certain shops, and funny scenes involving inns and hot springs etc..
Overall I'm glad I took the time to bother playing through this and take sceenshots, even though I couldn't read any of it. There's not even a youtube playthrough of this game available. If there was I probably would've just watched that instead so I could skip through the uninteresting gameplay. This just made me even more pumped to play through the rest of the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment